Hypotheses are theories, not arguments. I’ve been guilty of running a test because two team members disagreed. Can you guess how valuable those results were? They were pretty low on the list of value-adds and we probably missed opportunities we could have been testing with that time. If you do get into a disagreement and want to test, make sure to create an actual hypothesis around the two options. Why do you theorize that option A will outperform? Why would B? Decide if this is the best way to answer the question, and then add to the backlog of tests. Make sure to evaluate the value of the test and prioritize against other options using the same process other concepts go through.

I’ve found a few a few other areas that consistently give me testing materials that may be helpful for you to start with:

Other people’s test results and best practices — These can be fertile ground for testing since they should not be taken as gospel. What worked for one person may not work for you.

User experience concepts — Having a good understanding of user experience can provide a framework to theorize and test flows and elements on your website. I’ve often found that real life and UX best practices don’t work together and it becomes a question of which non-ideal option is best. These are good areas to test, particularly if you can apply your learnings elsewhere.

In-person sales techniques — I’ve found a lot of success experimenting with converting in-person techniques to the digital world. Since sales has been around for a long, long time you can find plenty of material and information on well-honed practices.

Behavioral economics — Have you heard of Dan Ariely? Daniel Kahneman? Behavioral economics is a growing field that studies human decision making. Reading through books and studies on the subject has given me plenty of ideas to test.

User resonance — This harkens back to defining your audience and creating a persona. If you can theorize about what will best resonate with your target audience then you can test it. Is an appeal to their family values or aesthetics more effective? How can you position your product in the hero image that best allows your audience to envision themselves using it.

The absolute best way to generate test ideas is to be on the lookout for assumptions and turn them into questions. When you identify an area the team is making a leap of faith, create a theory around it and propose a way to test the validity.

Tests take a lot of traffic. When you are testing variations you need to select a sample size that allows you to evaluate the outcomes with statistical certainty. In the example below I have a current conversion rate of 20% and I want to see if the changes I’ve made increase the conversion rate by 10% or more (so from 20% to 22+%). I’ll need 6,347 visitors per variation in order to complete my test. So I will want to select pages (or sites if you have multiple) that allows me to test in a decent timeframe. Keep in mind that tests do go stale and can introduce inaccuracies if they run too long so running a test for 12 months is not a perfect way to make up for low traffic volume.

Get everyone’s buy in before running the test. Stopping the test before you reach the agreed on sample size will result in more false results. If you stop a test early be prepared to throw out the data and draw no conclusions. This mostly happens when people see a strongly positive result and want to switch to the new variation (false positive) or when they see a strongly negative result, panic, and pull the test. In either case the test is not conclusive.

]]>http://barelyremarkable.com/starting-a-cro-process-part-2-identifying-test-pages/feed/0Starting a CRO Process – Part 1: Defining Your Audiencehttp://barelyremarkable.com/starting-a-cro-process-part-1-defining-your-audience/
http://barelyremarkable.com/starting-a-cro-process-part-1-defining-your-audience/#respondThu, 21 Dec 2017 18:58:27 +0000http://barelyremarkable.com/?p=187Conversion rate optimization should consist of more than throwing up random ideas into A/B tests to see which performs better or a way to resolve arguments. That’s not conversion rate optimization, that’s gambling with a low likelihood of payoff. I’ve seen conversion rates double on sites that implement a sound CRO process but I’ve never seen it happen by chance. The optimizers had (1) a firm grasp of the theories behind online marketing and user experience (2) were able to create valuable hypothesis to test and (3) a plan to test the highest value theories first and iterate on learnings.
To give teams just getting started on testing and optimization, I put together a presentation I use in workshops. This is intended to be an accessible platform to start a CRO program that should then continue to expand and grow into more advanced practices.
I’ve put my presentation from these workshops into a blog format below so that you can use it to start your process and avoid pitfalls many teams go through when starting from scratch. This is part one on defining your audience.

Define Your Audience

The first step to creating an optimized experience is to define who you are targeting. Too many teams skip this step, assuming that they already know the answer. Going through this step of the process give you an opportunity to dive in and discover audience attributed the team wasn’t aware of and to identify opportunities that may not have been pursued. For example, you may know that the majority of your visitors are women, but you can take this opportunity to look at why. Is it that women are more interested in your product than men? Or is it that most of your promotions are done on Facebook which skews female? Is there a difference in conversion rate or purchase behavior for different age ranges? If so, are you targeting the right age? Is your flow optimized for this target audience? Identifying your audience can include pulling information from current customer data, website usage (such as Google Analytics), segmenting customers and visitors, revisiting business goals, and unexpected trends.

Personas

Once you have identified your audience or audiences create personas around the demographics you notice. This attributes should be specific, not a range. A persona is not “Michael Mechanic” age 25 to 35. A persona misses its purpose unless it is relatable. I was originally introduced to personas in agile development and they were used to give our development team someone to empathize with. We talked about the personas as if they were a real person and made key decisions based off of what our persona would want or do. A key feature was the specificity of the demographics which allowed us to end conversations about what “a user” would want. “A user” may or may not want to customize their report profiles, but “Caroline Bale” wouldn’t because she was too busy to screw around with settings and wasn’t as technically savvy as our development team.
Marketing teams should be using personas the same way. You should be designing your site and writing content for your persona to avoid confusing paths and generic content. “A visitor” may be equally likely to click on link a, b, or c but you should know which one is most important for your persona. If there are multiple pathways or intentions then you should create multiple personas (within reason).
Personas should be based off of data and research and then validated through user interviews and updated as your team learns more about them. Even if you’ve been working to attract the same visitors for the past 10 years I guarantee there are things you will learn once you start taking another look and questioning assumptions.
Personas should also have pain points and goals that allow you to identify opportunities. An excellent framework to evaluate these is “Jobs to be Done.” I pulled the chart below from Alan Klement’s article on Jobs to be Done which I recommend reading through.

Once you’ve identified Jobs to be Done that relate to your product or service, you can experiment with ways to appeal to them in regards to that goal.

]]>http://barelyremarkable.com/starting-a-cro-process-part-1-defining-your-audience/feed/0Best Way to Fix Door Hinges for Sagging Doorhttp://barelyremarkable.com/best-way-to-fix-door-hinges-for-sagging-door/
http://barelyremarkable.com/best-way-to-fix-door-hinges-for-sagging-door/#respondMon, 03 Jul 2017 17:49:00 +0000http://barelyremarkable.com/?p=43If your door hinges are pulling out from the wall causing your door to sag, you’ll find that this is normally the result of stripped screw holes. Adam and I had this issue with the bathroom door of the house we’re fixing up. It was sagging and didn’t close quite right.

The issue is really with the screws and screw holes for the hinges. The weight of the door or a bad installation can cause them to pull out of the wall, leaving behind holes that are now too wide to hold a screw. You can use decking screws that are extra long to drill further into the wood, but these will eventually pull out as well. The best way to repair the door is to properly fill in the holes and then re-drill them.

Most DIYs on the web suggest using something like golf tees or wooden matches with wood glue to fill the holes and fix the hinges. DON’T DO IT! Adam and I have worked with professional contractors who say this is the least effective way to fix the stripped holes. The problem will just reappear in a year or two as the small pieces of wood work their way free from the constant weight of the door and you’ll have the same issue you just repairs.

The best way to fill these holes is to use the largest piece of wood possible. Adam and I used dowel rods (easy to find at any hardware store). Adam drilled a hole to match the width of the dowel rod, cleaned out the holes so the rod fit snuggly, then cut the dowel rod to the right length and glued it in.

This is the way professional contractors do it and it is so easy. Using the quick tips with matches, golf tees, etc. to fix the stripped screw holes is just not worth it.

Adam and I put together a video (complete with a guest doggie appearance!) for you to walk you through this super simple process to get professional and lasting results.

]]>http://barelyremarkable.com/best-way-to-fix-door-hinges-for-sagging-door/feed/026 Landing Page Best Practiceshttp://barelyremarkable.com/26-landing-page-best-practices/
http://barelyremarkable.com/26-landing-page-best-practices/#respondWed, 22 Mar 2017 18:54:46 +0000http://barelyremarkable.com/?p=37Working with the team to create landing page templates we can share with new clients or for new projects. I thought through some basics, ran through a few resources to jog my brain, and compiled this list. I’ll probably add to it later. And yes, some of these are super basic. Like enough that you wouldn’t think they’d need to be said but I really, truly am seeing senior designers make these mistakes.

Treat the content like a conversation. If you wouldn’t talk in that voice and the sections wouldn’t flow cohesively in a conversation, change the style. Hint: get Google Translate to read it out loud to you. If it sounds like sales copy being read then try cleaning it up.

Create a linear flow, easily moving from one idea to the next. If you include spots that move outside of this flow, plan out how to reconnect them, whether it’s back to that page or just recreating the rest of the flow on the new page.

Do not propose marriage on the first date. Match the CTA to the user’s state of mind when they are reading that section. i.e. “Enroll now” when the user hasn’t seen the plan details is the wrong CTA.

Avoid jargon and fluff. If any sentence makes you say “well duh” when you read it out loud then it’s going to fall flat with the reader. Things like “X is fun.” or “Y is very important to you.”

Content needs to include emotional resonance. It should understand what the visitor is feeling, what you want them to feel, and then reflect that.

Make sure the message on the site matches the ad.

Long versus short content will depend on the page. Testing is the best way to go. Whichever way you go though, it should be direct and clear with no filler. The rule of thumb is: the more complicated of expensive it is, the longer the copy should be. And free offers typically convert better with shorter copy.

No navigation on landing pages and minimal on microsites.

Have minimal conflicting CTAs and, if they are necessary, use a very clear hierarchy. One is usually best.

Think “attention ratio”: the ratio of interactive elements on a page, to the number of campaign conversion goals (which is always one). Closer to 1 is better. -Oli Gardner and Princeton neuroscientists

“The user is drunk” principal. If I can’t figure out the features, value prop, and next step blind drunk then it’s not clear enough.

Headline should be clear what is being offered, intriguing, or create empathy for a specific problem the value prop solves. Clear is easiest and most often effective. If the headline is intriguing or empathetic, the value prop should be immediately discoverable (5 second rule).

Immediately answer: “where am I?”, “what can I do here?”, “why should I do it with you?”

The amount of value you offer should be at least equal to the amount of effort/information requested to get the offer. In the case of a form it’s best practice to highlight what the user is getting in proximity to the form.

Adam and I got married a few months ago and I had the fabulous 8×10 print of my favorite picture. Plus I had the caricature the artist at the wedding had done. He seemed to be nicer to me and Adam than some of our other guests, haha. Our picture is rather flattering.

Anyways, I wanted to frame them in something rustic and charming to go with the rest of the house decor but my jaw dropped at the $40 price tag attached to the most reasonable pieces I could find on Etsy. Seriously, it’s a wooden square. They even up-charged for glass.

So despite Adam and my parents’ insistence that it would be harder than I thought I went ahead and gave it a try. Turns out it’s not too challenging. You do need access to a reasonable supply of power tools but any imperfections or misalignments end up getting filled in then sanded out with the orbital sander.

I finished both picture frames in a few hours. It took me a bit longer this time because I had to make a few mistakes along the way that I won’t replicate the second time. I tested different stains on the the wood and then selected Diftwood from Minwax for the wedding photo and Golden Pecan for the caricature.

When I was finished I added the photo to the mantel. It was a bit more of a rustic color and paired nicely with Adam’s old rifle from the 50’s, our tea pot, and the trees I got from my grandmother for Christmas. The warm toned one went up in the bedroom when we have a warm wooden bed frame and parchment colored bedspread.

The results are really stunning. You can see in the bedroom, the frame is next to a couple cheap frames I had lying around the house I added smaller wedding photos to. The cheaper frames really look…well…cheaper. I’m debating taking the glossy sealer off since I think that’s the problem. I wouldn’t recommend sealing the pallet wood ones if you were debating. It seems to loose the rustic charm.

First I measured the pictures and got glass cut at Lowes. Then I stripped one side of each piece of pallet wood with the table saw to make sure the widths were even. Doing it again I’d probably strip both sides to make it fit together easier since then both edges would be straight but it turned out fine if you’d rather not.

I made marks on the wood with the pencil about a half inch shorter than the glass I would use.

Note: I’m lying, I actually measured it exactly the same length the first time then had to go back and make it smaller. This is what I would do if I was doing it over again.

I used my speed square to draw a 45 degree line out from each point (i.e. the mark I made was going to be the shorter side of the wood).

Then I used my miter saw to cut the wood on the pencil lines. I tried to cut on the line exactly but when I screwed up I tried to err toward making the wood larger versus smaller since I could always cut it again.

Then I stacked each matching piece on the other, lined them up, and cut them again, together, if they weren’t exactly the same length.

Using the orbital sander I sanded the top to get the wood nice and clean.

I fit them together then laid the glass on top. I tried to make it so that the glass overlapped the wood about a quarter inch on each side. If it didn’t, I trimmed the pieces again using the miter saw. When I had them the way I wanted I traced the glass on the bottom side of the frame, trying to keep it even on each side.

I then placed the piece on the table saw with the pencil line up so I could see it (duh, right?). I adjusted it so that the saw blade would be in line with the pencil line. Then I raised the saw blade so it came up about a quarter inch. I flipped the piece of wood over and ran the pencil line over the saw blade. I repeated this with the other pieces.

Then I took the first piece again and flipped it so it was standing on the thin side with the first cut facing out. I lined up the saw blade so that I could run the board through it standing on the thin side and cut out a very long, skinny rectangle. This would make the indent that would hold my picture and the glass. I adjusted the guide so it would line up with the previous cut to make the rectangle then ran it through. It worked perfectly…score! I repeated it for the rest of the pieces.

Then I laid the pieces together again. If they aren’t perfect, don’t worry. Just make sure the indents line up. If one edge is higher than another on the front of one corner is slightly longer than the one it matches up to don’t worry, we’ll fix that later.

I laid the glass in to make sure that everything lined up then used the staple gun to staple the seams together, two per seam.

Then I took the glass out and held it on the side so that I could use the nail gun to shoot nails into the thin edge of the frame, aiming for the nail to go through the seam and keep the frame together. Be careful to make sure you are aiming straight into the wood, I had a couple nails pop out the back when I aimed slightly crooked.

Now, this is where you fix the imperfections:

I laid the frame down with the front facing up. I squirted a thin line of glue over the seams then opened the orbital sander’s dust bag and dumped some shavings onto the glue and rubbed it in thoroughly so the shavings/glue mixture got into the seams.

I let that dry then sanded it down so that only the mixture in the seams remained. For good measure I sanded the seams until they lined up perfectly. Preciously I had had one piece slightly higher than the other. I sanded the corners slightly, too, so they lined up and weren’t too sharp. I wanted it to look old and a bit worn.

Then I stained the frame and added the hanging apparatus. For the bedroom frame, I took a screw hook, made sure the frame was balanced, then screwed in the hook and hammered it so it was in close to the frame. I suppose you could also just screw it in at an angle. For the one on the mantel I was using the back to an old standing frame so I didn’t need to add anything to hang it with.

I did a little strategic sanding, too, to make the stain look worn one the seams and edges.

And that was it! Done! You may notice that their in a bit of a curve in the caricature’s frame. It splintered while I was stripping it and I thought it looked kind of cool so I just worked with it.

If you like videos, here’s the one I watched before starting this. The music is interesting but the video is helpful.